


Return to sender.

by mayhemark



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:48:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29256975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhemark/pseuds/mayhemark
Summary: While helping Taeyong pack before leaving permanently for another country, Johnny accidentally finds himself with a box of unsent letters.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 17
Kudos: 67





	Return to sender.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic and I am terrified. That being said, I would not have managed to write this and so much else (or at all) if not for my friend Hal (jyancity), who kindly listened to me from beginning to end, gave precious feedback, and was a beta for this little monster. Thank you for always being there, Hal.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy reading it.

It's three in the morning. An unsuspicious, unlabelled cardboard box is open on Johnny's table. It differs from the other cardboard boxes, even the unlabeled ones. This one was a mistake to open. 

In his defense, he thought this box would be for him. Taeyong graciously offered him some of his belongings, that he couldn't take with him to Korea. Johnny managed to get, in no particular order: a new desk, two drawers in deep, electric blue that Taeyong was immensely proud of but couldn't bring with him, so he trusted Johnny with them, all of his vinyl collection (Johnny was the only one in their circle of friends with a record player), and Taeyong's stuffed animals. That last one was certainly in an unsuspicious, unlabelled cardboard box in Taeyong's soon-to-be former apartment. 

Instead of Taeyong's secret collection of stuffed animals, he has letters. He should have guessed by the weight of the box. They're little plushies, five in total, each a different animal— a bunny, a cheetah, a bear, a cat, and one whale ( _ _"A blue whale, Johnny! Very important distinction!"__ , he had said when he saw the animal in the aquarium gift shop), and they're certainly back at home in Taeyong's room in a corner, because that's where Johnny took this box with letters in it from.

Letters Johnny made the terrible mistake to open up at dinner time to see if they were some kind of documentation, bills, records of any sort. Maybe he could've simply let them be, next to the two empty photo albums and the one yet to be used notebook it had in it, but Johnny prides himself in being thorough— Hell, it's the trait he is proudest to have passed down to Mark. But he's not proud of it now. Now, he's drunk. He's drunk because he started reading these at dinner with a bottle of red wine and now it's 3 am, and it was too much, __they__ were too much. There's seven letters in total— some short, some long, doesn't matter— Johnny read them all top to bottom, five times each. The wine he drank sloshes in his stomach and he is reminded of the sea— nothing to grab, a bottomless, endless void where you can only drown, or float, until your energies end and then you drown. Right now, he's floating, his sea threatens an incoming storm. 

The letters ( _ _confessions__ , god he shouldn't have read these, they're so __private__ ) are undated. But Johnny managed to put them in a timeline, three wine glasses ago, because Taeyong writes like he speaks and sings (ever present, ever changing). The letters are unaddressed, but Johnny is thorough— it's the trait he is proudest of having passed down to Mark— and he knows. 

— 

__There's something cruel, in the gentleness of your existence. In the breaths you halt before looking at me, and smile, radiant. It's cruel, the hope you give me._ _

__Loving you is cruel— you make me believe I am worthy, that loving you in the open could be a possibility, instead of letting this little fire, these small embers that keep me sane through the winter, that you forgave me for my sins against you. I certainly have not. Yet my existence is a particular one— much like a rock, the strikes against me leave a mark, wear me down. Once, I told someone dear to me this, and they responded that crystals are ugly rocks, before they are broken to reveal the beauty inside. They told me I'd perhaps end up like an amethyst— royal in color, kind in meaning— that the strikes of the world’s hammer against me would one day be worthy._ _

__Yet, I do not think I am amethyst. I wondered what I was, for a while— gold, quartz, agathe, sapphire, feldspar, granite. Those meanings seem too grand to be applied to me. I think I am simple rock, that my exterior is exactly the same as my interior. When I break— because I will (look away when I do)— I'll be the same, unassuming rock that you find in the margins of the lakes and rivers, the interior revealed to be the same as what your eyes first witnessed. In my deepest fears, I fear my inside will be hollow._ _

__I do wish I could take back the first time you saw me. To lie to you and say that I changed, that my innards are not the same as you see them. Your eyes matter the most to me, I find myself always looking for them._ _

__Yet it is somewhat relieving that you saw me like that, that I did not have to lie to you. I want to be honest with you. The only thing I hide are these embers that I cherish so close, so selfishly. I hope one day they turn coal, cold, because loving you, with all my shortcomings, is the most selfish thing I have done, and you are deserving of better._ _

__And because you are, that is the condition of my silence. I'll hold these in my hands, until they burn me, darling dearest. Please, fall in love._ _

__—_ _

"Do you remember the aquarium?! I can't believe the seals __actually__ came to greet you next to the glass!" 

Yuta slams down his beer on Taeyong's old table. It's Yuta's now. Antique wood, thrifted for almost nothing. Johnny and Taeyong carved their initials on the wood below when they still lived together. Yuta doesn't know that. 

"Yeah! I can't believe you were so lucky! Did you have some fish on you or something!? Or was it your Disney Princess charms?!" 

Donghyuck is loud, even though he’s sleepy. The way he pouts at not being the one the seals paid attention to is cute. The part of Taeyong's life he's taking is his plants. 53 pots in total, already at his and Mark's house. 

He's staying here, unlike Taeyong. His life, Mark, is here. Mark whispers to him something low in Korean on his ear, the tongue and tone he uses just with him because Donghyuck is precious. He's drunk, cuddling Mark close, grabbing his arm and pouting at his elders, while Mark tucks a rebellious strand behind his ear, both sitting on the sofa that Taeil will come by later with a pick up truck to get. Johnny's back already hurts thinking about it. 

"I think I was just lucky," Taeyong says in a small voice, playing with the liquid inside the beer bottle. He's looking down. Everything quiets for a while, until someone starts sniffing. 

"You know we'll miss you, right? I mean, you've been in this country for what? A decade? More? Like damn," Yuta's voice falters a bit at the end, but he coughs and continues. "Anyways, you'll always have us, you know that?"

"I know."

"You'll always have a home here, Taeyong," Johnny speaks, and Taeyong looks at him surprised for a second, before something low, deep and sad, utterly, utterly human passes by his eyes. 

"I'm… Thank you. Thank you."

— 

__In my dreams, I see you, us. Would you like to know how we live, my love?_ _

__The family comes to visit every Sunday. We all eat lunch together. I cook, because you cook during the weekdays. You set the table and do the dishes after, a mirror image of our day to day alone, just the two of us, when the others are not here. The house is full of plants. There's a piano. You play beautifully._ _

__The sun comes through the living room windows. The rays wake you up gently when you nap. I covered you with the same blanket we use together when we're on the sofa before going to the gardens, where you'll find me after shaking off your sleep. It's an old, used shade of white, because it has been with us many years. There's always music. You tolerate my beloved vinyl collection, and there’s always something playing in our house. There's always laughter. I love yours._ _

__

__Our house._ _

__Our house._ _

__Our home._ _

__That sounds like a dream._ _

— 

Five days to go. Johnny is the only one helping Taeyong in the apartment. 

"Do you have any plans on, like… Korea? I mean, business aside?"

Taeyong looks at Johnny with a raised eyebrow and a grin on his lips, perfectly amused. 

"I'm just worried!" Johnny defends himself by raising his hands in the air. "I mean, don't get me wrong, you do you, you know I'll support you no matter what, but you haven't dated in a while… since, y'know."

"Us?"

Thank god they're alone. Johnny is not a pious man, but entering this room, seeing this bed— he needs godly protection. It's Hell made manifest, his memories laced with want and love still dormant coming forward to haunt him. 

"I did date, Johnny." Taeyong sets his box ("Jewellery: in boxes. Very fragile! Handle carefully!" It reminds Johnny of his heart, left somewhere among the blank spaces between Taeyong’s words.) aside, looking at him seriously. "How do you think I met Doyoung?"

"I thought he was a work friend?" Johnny speaks louder when Taeyong leaves to get a glass of water, refusing to move his feet from the bedroom. 

"Yeah," the other yells from the kitchen. It's too sunny in the house, since most rooms don't have anything in it anymore. Emptier means silence, or the echoing of the steps in a ghost-like house. Johnny can hear the water stream, the stop, the silence when Taeyong drinks, then an empty tap when he sets his cup on the counter, a breath before he starts walking back. When he leans against his (no longer their) bedroom door frame, his arms are crossed, and his voice shows his amusement. Johnny is a fool, in more ways than one. 

"People can be both. When I introduced him to everyone, we weren't dating anymore."

"Oh."

Doyoung was introduced when Taeyong managed to snag a position at the archives in the district library. Johnny thought it would be a boring job for most people, but Taeyong? Taeyong __loved__ it. 

For someone ever-changing, ever-present, Taeyong loved to lose himself in words and worlds that humans could not touch and live. Taeyong smelled of parchment, old and ratty book covers. Taeyong's hands were smeared with ink on the side from filing documents and inquiries by hand most days. 

Johnny didn't live with Taeyong anymore when he got the position. Johnny was busy establishing his own business— a coffee shop with its very own coffee line— just in the town's historical center. It was his lifelong dream. He didn't regret it, but he was sad that he had missed this part of Taeyong's life. 

Doyoung was introduced to everyone at one of their Sunday dinners. Yuta immediately struck up a conversation with him. Johnny did not, Mark gave him the stink eye for it. Donghyuck and Taeyong left the kitchen with the food and all went well. Taeyong looked at Doyoung with stars in his eyes and Johnny felt the food lacked salt for the first time. 

But he warmed up. Doyoung's smile wasn't easy, but Johnny enjoyed having to earn it. The librarian and fellow Shakespeare enthusiast eventually got drunk enough one time to give everyone a performance of Hamlet's monologue, and it was then that everyone knew they'd have to add another name to the Christmas present list. 

"I didn't know."

"It was a weird time. I didn't tell many people."

"Taeil?"

"Taeil. Of course he knew, I tell him practically everything, especially when I don't want to. I'll know the charms of that man one day, I swear."

"Yeah…"

Silence came back briefly, until Taeyong deemed Johnny's face worrisome enough to break it. 

"Hey. What's on your mind?"

"I just… I'm? I'm sorry? I didn't know. I didn't even ask! I know I had the shop, but still. I'm sorry, I was a bad friend there."

"No, no, no. Johnny, you have nothing to worry about! Please. Really, the last thing I'd have wanted was to come between you and your dream. You were so busy."

"Still."

"No! No apologies! No need for them!" Taeyong comes closer and pouts, before huffing dramatically and giggling when he starts packing his accessories again. Johnny gives a small laugh, proclaims defeat, and they settle in a comfortable silence, packing everything else. 

They'll deliver these later to charities, friend's houses or thrift stores. Johnny's fingers get colder whenever he gives a box away, pieces of Taeyong being scattered mindlessly everywhere. He's scared he won't remember him. Losing him is grieving. Giving him away feels like murder. 

They come back later, with two pizza boxes and a bottle of coke. It doesn't matter that they ate already— cheap burgers in the middle of the drive between Jaehyun's house and the thrift store; it’s food and Johnny wants to see Taeyong at his side just for a little bit more. 

Just for a little bit more. 

__Just a little bit more._ _

"I miss you around the house sometimes." 

Taeyong stops just before he bites his pizza, looking dumbfounded at Johnny. There's silence when he sets it down, takes a gulp of coke that they both know is just to regain composure. 

"I never… I never lived where you are now, though." 

Oh, but he visited, and the ghost of that stay-in movie day haunts Johnny in his worst hours. He tried to bake the same bread Taeyong did that day, but it always turns sour. 

He shrugs. 

"Yeah, but I lived with you for what, five, seven years? Ever since college. I got used to having you around." 

Taeyong nods but doesn't say anything back. Johnny asks him for the coke bottle and drinks before speaking again. 

"Not having you near will be weird."

The other chuckles at that. When he speaks, he does so low, carefully. There's a tiredness between the small amusement in his voice, as if he had spoken about this topic a million times already. 

"C'mon now. You have had at least two times to practice before. Nothing new."

"Hey, when I lost my boyfriend and _ _then__ my roommate, it was different! You weren’t moving to another country!"

Taeyong laughs openly at Johnny's offended tone, pats him twice on the shoulder to ease him. Johnny feels warm in that spot. 

"You know I'll still be your friend, right, Johnny? No matter the distance."

"Yeah, yeah."

He lays down on the bedroom floor for a second, aware of Taeyong's gaze on him. The bedroom is almost stripped of everything now. There's spots on the wall where posters and frames used to be. The ceiling is white, the drawings Taeyong painted on it (swirls and colorful geometric patterns, because the ceiling in the archives was all wooden and " _ _so dull, Johnny! My computer doesn't have internet access and, sometimes, I just don't wanna read the books I bring when work is slow! Where else will I look!?"__ and god forbid if it was going to be the same in his home) already covered. Johnny kinda misses them. 

"Do you regret us?"

"No. Not at all." Taeyong doesn't miss a beat. He comes closer to where Johnny is on the floor. Johnny can smell his perfume. "Why do you ask?"

"No particular reason." He pauses. Starts again. "Don't forget me."

Taeyong is looking into his eyes now. Johnny's hand wraps around his wrist, loose enough to let him shake away if he wants to. 

"Never."

His hand goes up. Johnny's thumb caresses the skin under Taeyong's eyes. He sees a spark he doesn't recognize in them before Taeyong closes them. 

Johnny is a fool.

"Can I kiss you?"

Johnny is a fool. Kissing is far too gentle. He needs something permanent of Taeyong’s, or on him. He's escaping through his fingers, dying in bits. The bed where they fucked in years ago will be disassembled in three days. Taeyong will be gone in five. 

Taeyong's face twists in something akin to pain. He bites his lips, eyes still closed, and nods. 

Johnny is a fool. 

Taeyong is one as well. 

— 

__Just a little bit more. Somehow, you have convinced me of wanting more, more, and more— not by your own actions, but because I am greedy, stuck in serving my own desires. Like there’s a buffet in front of me, and I have not eaten in a week, or two, or more, so I gorge myself while you are restrained and cautious in your takings._ _

__Whenever possible, I will go with the option that better feeds my sins._ _

__I care little about the rest. I am hollow. The want I have will never be filled._ _

__Maybe I should start choosing what destroys me best._ _

— 

Doyoung takes one look at Taeyong's hickeys and one look at Johnny, crosses his arms and speaks plainly to Taeyong. 

"Whore."

Johnny bursts out laughing. 

"God, I'm so glad I'll never have to deal with you again." 

Johnny chuckles at their interaction and then turns away, giving them some privacy. They haven’t been alone in some time, and Johnny doesn’t want to see them hug— not when the letters are a painful and burning reminder of Taeyong’s feelings. 

He checks his phone, reads Mark’s message saying he’s here and grabs his coat. Doyoung is helping Taeyong with all the kitchen packing, wrapping his cups in paper and then bubble wrap. They’re close, shoulder to shoulder, Johnny notices, but they both do him the favor of walking to the door. Hugs and brief goodbyes later, Taeyong closes the door while Doyoung looks at him suspiciously. 

Johnny doesn’t know what makes him stay at the door front for a while, but he does. Doyoung and Taeyong’s gleeful chatter doesn’t return. Instead he hears whispers just for a bit, before footsteps come in and take them away. Only when it’s silent does he leave to the outside of the building. 

Mark greets him with his red, run down car, arms crossed and shit eating grin in his face. 

“So.”

“No. Don’t start. Not a word.”

Johnny takes the driver’s seat, pointedly ignoring Mark’s mocking bow before he enters the car, and Mark kicks back in the seat next to him. Mark tells him about his day (one of Donghyuck’s students had to be taken on an ambulance home because he twisted his ankle so bad in rehearsal that it worried calm and composed Donghyuck to the point of tears, Mark’s boss accepted three out of his five suggested song compositions in the studio), thankfully ignoring Johnny’s purple and red blotches on his neck, but Johnny just grunts as an answer so he stops. The words fade into a quiet hum of the motors, with its stops and go’s as Johnny drives.

Mark’s is looking outside the window, hand supporting his face, when he snaps Johnny out of his reverie. 

“Y’know, Donghyuck wanted to break up with me once.”

Johnny almost slams the breaks. 

“Huh?!”

Mark nods, smirking now that he has Johnny’s attention. 

“Yeah, a few years ago, probably in our third year of being together? Two years ago, more or less” Mark chuckles, but it’s dark. “Said a bunch of things. But… the one that stuck is that he felt like he was pretending, all the time. With me, himself.”

“Two years ago…” Johnny whispers, because that seems like the most correct thing to do. “When he went back to university?”

“Before he decided that, actually.”

Johnny is silent, feeling stuck despite being in a moving car. His teeth have been fused together ever since Taeyong announced he’d be moving to Korea, preventing him from speaking. 

Mark looks at him, sighs, deems him a lost case, and continues. 

“Got used to performing, I think, so he felt like he was doing it all the time. So he got lost in himself. Said that I’d fallen for a version of him that wasn’t real. That he was just a reflection of other people. I think he felt hollow inside. ”

“What… what did you do?”

“What I always do. Kept on loving him.”

“Love isn’t a cure for everything, Mark.” Johnny scoffs, and his voice is bitter. There’s a weight in his chest that makes his breath fall short, he’s drowning, the storm caught on with him. Because if loving was enough, then he would have kept by Taeyong’s side since the beginning until now, but it isn’t, because at the end of the day love isn’t a cure, it’s dependency, it’s a want, it’s __complacency__ , and most of all, it’s a choice, and it haunts him until this day because Taeyong never stopped being a living ghost to Johnny, even when he moved on and brought home Doyoung.

“Of course not. But it is a reassurance you aren’t alone, a reason to be better.”

“And what does ‘better’ look like?”

Johnny’s looking for answers in people again, this time to the questions the spaces between Taeyong’s letters left for him. Was it... Doyoung?

Mark smiles, and Johnny remembers that he grew up with Donghyuck as well, because their smiles mirror one another. 

“Depends on the person. For us, it meant looking for alternatives, a new job for Donghyuck and taking out a loan for his studies. For you, I don’t know. But I’d say talking is a big help in finding that better,” Mark throws his hands up in the air and chuckles, “I don’t know, dude. Just trying to help.”

Johnny is a fool. 

“I have one question though, Mark?”

“Yeah?”

Johnny turns to him smiling, and for the first time in a while, speaks. 

“Who the fuck even asked you?”

Mark laughs at him, and Johnny laughs along with him. He gives the first breath in weeks. 

— 

__In the safety of your arms I cannot grow. I have made you inhuman by loving you— constantly comparing to the idea I have in my mind. I love you all the time, but especially between breaths, when you are, but are not, untainted by the essence of this world._ _

__I am inhuman, as well. But I don’t want to love you just because my misery can find company in yours._ _

__You always seem to come back though, I don’t know why. The embers grow hot when you care, and they burn._ _

—

With three days to go, Taeil opens the doors of his house to Johnny so he can get drunk safely instead of drinking alone to the point of blacking out in the kitchen, half naked on the tiles with his windows open and getting a mild case of hypothermia again. Sitting on Taeyong's couch, he’s free to drink as he pleases, with the occasional nag from Taeil to eat the takeout they ordered. Taeil puts a Mission Impossible film on the TV, and makes idle conversation until Johnny goes silent and stares beyond the screen. 

Taeil hands him a pack of cigarettes. Johnny doesn’t smoke but he takes one anyway. 

“So, what are you really here for?”

Taeil turns the TV off and takes one cigarette from the pack. Without the TV the room is dark except for the embers in the cig and the yellow light from the outside. It reminds Johnny’s time in college, when he would run away from his readings to go smoke in Taeil’s room just like this. Even the way he gets up to open a window and sit in the border is just the same, with Johnny slinking from the couch to the floor— the only difference is that they're older, and what they smoke is tangy on their mouth. 

Johnny doesn’t answer. He can’t see Taeils face because the light doesn’t let him, but he guesses he has an eyebrow raised, and that he knows anyways. Taeil might have double majored in Mathematics and Computer Science, but Johnny always joked that he should have gone to Psychology to get paid for all the therapy their friend group dumps on him. 

“Taeyong?”

Johnny hums positively. Red wine runs on his veins. He takes the glass to his mouth to wash away the taste of smoke, but it makes the wine taste like shit. 

“Don’t know what to do.” He speaks, running a hand through his hair. His undercut needs to be cut, a small part of his brain notices, the one that’s not occupied at being offended at Taeil’s scoff of his words. 

“About?”

Silence. 

“What __did__ you do?”

“There were letters—”

“John, you—”

“I read them.”

“You went through his _ _mail__!?”

“No! No, I— It was a mistake, I was helping him move and I mixed up the boxes I was supposed to bring, I checked to see what the letters were and if they were bills or something like that and…” 

“They weren’t.”

“No.”

“Am I correct in assuming you read them all?” Taeil’s voice is monotone, restrained. Johnny feels like a stupid teenager getting the __not mad, just dissapointed__ treatment from a parent. In a way, he’s felt like that all week. He nods.

“God fucking dammit, John. I know you’re stubborn, but couldn’t you have stopped at the first one at least. It’s correspondence, Johnny, you know that’s personal.”

“Ha,” he says without any real emotion in his voice. “You know me. Once I start something, I gotta do it no matter what. I am __thorough__.”

“No,” Taeil puffs out smoke, annoyed. “You’re stubborn. And Mark is too! By the way! Goddamn brothers— ”

“Hey.” Johnny warns. Mark’s off-limits for everyone, even Taeil. He raises a hand apologetically, and Johnny lets it go. 

“What should I do?”

“Well, what do you do with letters? Give it back to the sender, or to whoever they’re addressed to, I don’t know.”

“There’s no address. Actually… Actually those letters Taeil, they’re so… they’re so…”

He trails off, lets the sentence die alone and in silence. Taeil looks at him from his spot in the perched window, gives a few puffs.

“Well, if there’s no address, I guess there’s only one thing you could do.” 

Johnny sighs and Taeil finishes his cigarette and closes the window. Johnny feels him sitting on the couch more than sees it from the corner of his eye, because he’s busy staring at the way the low fire slowly eats the cig even without him doing anything. 

“What’s in the letters?”

“Personal shit. It’s… God, Taeil, it’s so—”

“Personal?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what you get, bud.”

Johnny takes a long drag out of his cigarette and Taeil takes a swig out of his red bull can. 

“Is… Is there anything that we should be worried about?”

Taeil asks like he knows more than he lets on. Johnny knows that he knows more than he lets on. 

“No. No, I don’t think so…”

“Good. Good. So, what’s your __real__ problem then?”

“What?”

“Johnny,” he says, slow and cautious. He lights up another cigarette for good measure, letting the puffs he takes become breaks for his words. “You know that the right thing to do would be giving them back. But you haven’t. How long have you had them? A week? You could’ve given him the box by now, let everything go. Why haven’t you? You’re… You’re not like this.” 

But he is. Between the longest drag out of a cigarette in his life and putting out the cigarette in the ashtray, Johnny comes to several conclusions. He curls up, head on his knees, to avoid the red storm inside his stomach coming out. 

One, letting go feels like death. 

Two, he's jealous. He wants to know who’s in the letters. 

Three.

“You’re still in love with him.” Taeil whispers, as if that makes the realization any easier. 

“I’m still in love with him.”

Taeil sets his hand on Johnny’s shoulders and squeezes. 

“But you have to let him go.”

“But I have to let him go.”

Johnny dies then. 

“Tell me everything, Johnny. Even what’s in the letters. I won’t let you do this alone.”

It’s four thirty in the morning when they finish. Johnny sleeps on Taeyong’s couch that night, covered in a white blanket Taeil had around. 

— 

__Destruction is beautiful, and I’ll make mine the most entertaining for your eyes. I’ll die in pieces, the most spectacular explosion as the curtain closes and I stop acting— You won’t miss that character, and you never saw the real me who wanted you so much that ate his tongue raw._ _

__When I look in the mirror I see someone who can die, insignificant— and I cannot decide if I should die mediocre so I miss nothing, or act with delusions of grandeur to pretend I am something._ _

__With both, at the deepest end of it, I face myself with one simple truth: it’s power, the giving up of it to convince myself I could choose, or the taking, so I could be, so I could own._ _

__I'm scared of that, that impulse. It scares me. I don't want to own you. Binding you to me would be our end. I’d rather destroy myself than bring you pain._ _

— 

With forty eight hours to go, Johnny’s anxiety rises all day until it culminates in a breakdown when he’s home alone. 

Taeil called him stupid for thinking the letters were addressed to Doyoung, but today, seeing Doyoung and Taeyong walking side by side and three new bruises in Taeyong’s neck (he memorized his, burned it into his memory so at least that wouldn’t go), he can’t see how it couldn’t be him. 

And, while the letters are unaddressed, Johnny knows Taeyong. It matches up with him, and with them, when they were together. 

So, Johnny goes a bit stupid. He stays behind when everyone leaves Taeyong’s last night in the apartment, takes the trash out, helps him clean everything that needs to be cleaned. Taeyong’s bed (their bed) is disassembled already, on display in some goodwill store around, and the mattress that followed him since the end of college and start of his adult life is ready to be taken away in the morning when the trash collection arrives. 

When Taeyong closes the house to sleep in the hotel he booked nearby, he does so slowly. Johnny lets him take his time, holds his backpack with all the stuff he needs for two nights in a hotel in it. He goes back inside once and walks to every empty room, stands a bit at the door of his bedroom looking at the ceiling, already painted over. Then he looks at Johnny with a sad smile, and walks to him, closing the door behind him. He doesn’t speak, but when Johnny grabs his hand in silent support while they walk to the car, he squeezes back and gives a strained smile in thanks. 

Johnny doesn’t let go. When he’s driving to the hotel and Taeyong is crying silently, one of his hands is on his thigh, thumb caressing mindlessly in a small act of comfort. He opens the car door for him, and Taeyong grabs his hand again weakly. Johnny notices, swallows the anxiety growing in his throat, and, for the first time if he’s being really honest, he speaks unselfishly.

“Do you want me to stay for a bit?”

Taeyong nods. 

So Johnny keeps being stupid. He goes up with Taeyong to his hotel room, ignoring the look from the lady at the help desk, the squeeze on his throat. While Taeyong is taking a shower, he orders sweets and hot chocolate from them both even though it’s extremely late and the hotel staff will hate him for it. He sets them on the bedside table while Taeyong does his skin routine, still locked in the bathroom. He puts Taeyong’s favorite movie playing. When Taeyong comes out of the bathroom and sits on the bed, mindlessly munching on the sweets after a brief whispered “thank you”, Johnny dries his hair with a towel and combs it. He’s halfway done with drying Taeyong’s hair with the lowest setting when Taeyong pleads with him. 

“Please stay.”

He shouldn’t. He has work tomorrow, and he’s been away from the coffee shop long enough to know that he has already too much paperwork to catch on. His back hurts from sleeping at Taeil’s house on the couch. His fridge is empty. He has dishes on the sink that he needs to wash, in fact, his entire house is a mess. Anywhere is better than here now.

“Ok.”

He stays. Puts his shoes and his socks next to the door, his jeans and shirt folded on a chair, and sleeps only in his boxers and a big oversized shirt that Taeyong had brought. 

Taeyong cuddles him for comfort, asks to watch the movie from the beginning because he wasn’t paying attention. Johnny does as he asks, because he’s weak. When Taeyong starts playing with his hair, he cups his hand to stop it, but Taeyong just ends up looking at him, and his lips. 

When he surges forward to kiss him, he does so cautiously, delicately. Johnny forgets about the letters halfway across his neck, purple and red become his favorite colors. There’s nothing more that night, just cuddles and kisses, and Taeyong’s peaceful, resting sighs as he sleeps, when it’s late and Johnny turns everything off. He sleeps too, throwing an arm over Taeyong’s waist and staying there. His breath and warmth lull him to sleep and he feels right for the first time in a long while.

He wakes up at 6:30 am. He leaves the room quietly, messages Taeyong that he had work and had to go home. That he’ll wash the shirt he let him borrow and give it to him later. When he gets home he realises it’s cold, but he does a load of laundry with only Taeyong’s t-shirt before changing to a warm fuzzy sweater and sweatpants. He’s watching the t-shirt tumble around when it hits him, all at once. 

Taeyong is going. He’s not coming back. He’s not __his__ , and he has lost every opportunity to make him so. He hasn’t done anything about the letters because he wants something of Taeyong to stay near him, solid and real. Because all the sweatshirts that he still has from their relationship no longer have his smell, or reflect him anymore, and the hickeys will fade. Johnny chased and was haunted by ghosts of Taeyong, the past and the present, and all the spectres whispered the same, awful thing to him. 

__Goodbye._ _

He manages to message Jaehyun with trembling fingers saying he can’t come in today, to run the shop for him. He misses a few letters here and there, but the point gets across. Jaehyun doesn’t ask many questions, thankfully. He’s free to fall to his knees sobbing and crying, the anxiety making his throat seize up painfully when he tries to control his breathing. He doesn’t notice when he stumbles and curls in the tile floor, only notices after his cheeks start growing cold and red. 

With forty eight hours until Taeyong’s departure, Johnny realises he mourns for seven years of unacted upon feelings. 

— 

__When I see love in others, and in songs and movies, it always seems so… bright. Hopeful, even. Not painful, not at the end of it all._ _

__The end of it all for me was painful. Still is, sometimes, my love._ _

__And our love wasn’t bright. Not mine, at the very least. No, my love was spun with something awful and horrid, born from my very essence. It was poison— I poisoned you. I poisoned us._ _

__Sometimes, I wonder why you stayed for so long, near someone like me. Maybe it was the poison._ _

__I’m sorry. I made venom run through your veins._ _

__You can leave now._ _

— 

“Well, I guess this is it. I’m going now.”

They’re at the airport's doors, granted a little privacy due to the ungodly hour it is— no cars pass by to interrupt them, no screaming families receiving their loved ones, or letting them go, no pigeons running around. There’s a kind of silence that only exists when it’s night, and the world still breathes, but it doesn’t matter because there’s something else. Johnny wishes he could walk Taeyong inside, right up until the gates, and stay there forever, or maybe just a little longer. But it isn’t what Taeyong seems to want, so he doesn’t. 

“Yeah.”

It’s cold and he’s wearing a jacket and a long scarf, but he still feels like he needs another layer. The clothes feel weird on him, light but heavy at the same time. Taeyong’s nose is pink from the cold, even with the sweater and parka he’s wearing. Johnny commits it to memory, and wonders if he has handkerchiefs on that backpack of his, since his nose always runs when it’s cold.

It’s just the two of them here. Donghyuck and Mark had to wake up early for their jobs tomorrow, Doyoung was heading a reunion at the archives early in the morning and couldn’t afford to be late, Yuta was on paramedic duty from early morning till afternoon and had to rest. Which was fine, everyone had said their goodbyes yesterday, and Taeyong made sure everyone drank enough alcohol to at least remember his departure with a legendary headache, except Yuta of course. The solitude makes it better and worse at once.

"That's it? A yeah? Very disappointing, Suh,” Taeyong giggles.

“It’s, what, four in the morning, Taeyong? You can’t expect me to wax poetic,” he says, but he laughs anyways. “But yeah, I’m disappointed in myself too.”

“Why is that?” he asks, suddenly serious. His eyebrows are knitted together in worry and Johnny hates that, so he cups his face and thumbs those lines away. 

“Wish I could say more.”

“No need to, Johnny. You… These last few days... You helped me a lot. Thank you.”

“Helped with your frustrations too!” He adds, laughing away, trying to make away with the weird feeling that's settling on them. It makes Taeyong’s shoulders slump, his eyes shiny and teary. Johnny hates it. Taeyong holds one of his wrists while he still caresses his face and he feels like dying all over again. 

“Johnny… What are you thinking?”

__I have your letters._ _

__I love you._ _

__Don’t go._ _

“Thank you. For everything. All these years. That sounds weird but. It’s the truth.”

Taeyong is silent for a second, his gaze dropping to the floor. When he looks back at him, he has a grin and his tone is mocking. 

“You’re right. That is weird.”

Johnny drops his hands from his face and punches him in the shoulder. Taeyong pretends to be hurt. 

“I will literally never speak to you again.”

“Oh, please don’t do that, I would __never__ survive not hearing from you and your terrible roasted coffee adventures.”

“You say that as if it wasn’t my coffee mix that put you through college.”

“And my gratitude for such a heavenly drink will always exist, but it still doesn’t hide the fact that you let your beans roast for too long and your clients refuse to acknowledge that!”

“You say that as if you didn’t go to my shop to drink everyday—”

“Well you do have pretty good cakes there.”

They look at eachother, with growing smiles, until both of them chuckle. Something heavy sets on Johnny’s heart after a second, and it’s not until he hears Taeyong’s four am alarm that he set so he could proceed to check-in inside that he realises what it is. 

He looks at Taeyong’s slender fingers sliding the button to silence it and thinks of kissing them. His mother liked Taeyong when they met, and was heartbroken when Johnny announced they had separated, even on amicable terms. She kept playing with her engagement ring as he explained everything to her, the small gold jade ring rotating and rotating in her thin, wrinkled fingers. Family heirloom, she had told Johnny once. 

“I’ll miss you.”

Taeyong doesn’t answer. When the surprise melts from his face, he gives a step closer, cups Johnny's face with his hands. On his tippy toes, he whispers a small “can I?” before Johnny nods, and kisses him. 

It’s not passionate— it’s almost not even a press of lips, with the way Taeyong seems even hesitant to press further into him, as if he would break. When Taeyong starts to separate from him, Johnny finally finds enough strength in his arms to pull Taeyong closer to him, encircling his waist, his brain finally working again. Taeyong brings him closer by the back of the neck then, and Johnny is thankful that they’re alone. Taeyong pulls away, but finds comfort in the junction of Johnny’s neck, so he stays there until his eyes stop watering, with Johnny caressing his hair in a poor attempt to console him. 

“I’ll miss you too.”

“When I’m there, I’ll paint the ceiling of my bedroom again.” 

“How will you do that, Taeyong? I won’t be there to reach the ceiling.” 

— 

In many ways, Taeyong has felt frozen ever since he has left the familiar, reassuring pace of school life, although he has not stopped. No— Taeyong has moved forward, undeniably, but mindlessly, terrified of every step. Because he has never imagined this— adulthood. When he looks at his hands he wonders why a child is staring at those until he realises it's his. Taeyong was so focused on not leaving traces behind when he walked that he forgot to look forward, and now he wonders if he has a right to look at all.

It’s been five months in Korea and he’s looking at Johnny’s instagram. He doesn’t update it regularly— God knows that man is seven feet deep in coffee blends and accounting at least six days of the week, and the one day off he gives himself, he’s out trying new things. No time to update instagram as much as Taeyong would like, the little notifications he gets on his phone brightening his day up whenever he needs. 

They’ve been talking, sort of. It takes days sometimes, to get back at each other, due to a combination of time difference and their adult lives. Last message sent between them was from Taeyong, updating him on the finished status of his ceiling, with a photo attached. He was sure it would make Johnny come up with a funny comment to get back at him, at the way he decided to paint not only the ceiling but also one of the walls in his room with all sorts of shapes and squiggly forms again, but he hadn’t answered back yet. 

It felt sad, seeing them drift off so visibly like this. Taeyong supposed it was natural, that distance would be both physical and emotional, and he __had__ wanted that: to die in little pieces in America so that he could start anew in Korea, with new people he didn’t feel like he was constantly disappointing or living in the shadows of the expectations they had of him. The past was not as much as a foundation of himself, but a constant reminder of complacency, of daily, unchanging life. This, moving to Korea, running from the ghost Johnny was, this little death of his would be able to give him back some control on who he is. 

But now, it’s been five months in a land he doesn’t quite recognize from memory anymore, where life has not calmed down, but accelerated pointlessly, and he feels alone. It’s Sunday and Taeyong was supposed to be cooking dinner for everyone if he was back home, but he has a packet of ramen that he bought simply because he doesn’t have the energy to cook sometimes. 

So, he boils the water. Puts the noodles in them, and the seasoning, plus a cracked egg. When it’s done, he pours it into a bowl and sets it on the table, the steam rising and breaking the picture of a small, washed away in white light kitchen. And he gets a pen and some paper, writing words no one but him will ever read. 

—

__These bones grow softer when they see you. My aches are eased, like I'm settling in bed after a long day and sleep starts growing on me, not enough to slip yet, but enough to see all the world fondly._ _

__You are comfort, and my insomnia wants to give in._ _

— 

It’s two am when Johnny comes back to a dark home. He already knows the layout by heart, so he takes off his shoes and stumbles to his bedroom where he falls into his bed. A whale plushie falls down to the floor when his weight hits the mattress, and Johnny stares at it for a minute until he picks it up from the floor, settling it next to the others. He decides to take a shower and change since he’s already moving. For good measure, he decides to eat the leftovers in the fridge too, straight from the container and not heating it up. 

It’s been five months without Taeyong and the city doesn’t feel the same without him. And no matter how they keep in touch, the notifications that pop up whenever Taeyong likes one of his status or photos, it doesn’t feel the same. It’s empty in the same way that a phone’s blue light is, or the leftover he’s eating— after it’s done, it’s not fulfilling, and he’s faced with the fact that he’s simply consuming for its own sake. It’s hard to compare the messages that Taeyong sends, bubbles that eventually end up disappearing no matter how many screenshots Johnny has. It’s hard to compare this to Taeyong, the real Taeyong that was a warm presence even when he wasn’t close, the one with the steady, quiet breaths that slept near him. 

“You should be a writer”, Johnny messaged him once when it was his day off and Taeyong was bored at work.

“Why?”

 _ _Have you seen your writing__ , he wanted to say. __I don’t think I ever understood you better.__

“It would be a break from reading. Plus, how cool would it be to have your own book in the library you work at?”

“Hm. I’ll think about it.”

In the end, this is his reality. An apartment filled with ghosts of what once was, an oven that hasn’t been used since Johnny tried and failed to recreate Taeyong’s bread the day he was next to him. Walls that Johnny bought with his own money that made him set down roots, after his were ripped off from Taeyong’s heart when they broke up. It should have been closure, this new chapter of his life, but it wasn’t. Imitations upon imitations upon limitations, mourning those still living. If Taeyong’s bedroom was hell, then this was purgatory and his penitence. 

He turns the living room lamp on and curls on the couch with the white blanket he stole from Taeil the night he slept there. He searches Netflix for some mindless entertainment until he feels exhaustion seep in his bones and he can fall asleep. He settles on a romcom Donghyuck mentioned once, with the volume so low he can’t understand most lines without having subtitles on. 

At some point it starts to rain, and it reminds him of the day he stood in the airport until 7 am, one hour after Taeyong’s flight departed, simply because he couldn’t move. He slumped over the driving wheel and cried until his heart felt lighter again. 

With the memory of Taeyong, come the letters. With those, came the guilt of never having told Taeyong about them. Taeil has __gently__ persuaded him that it wasn’t Doyoung in the letters, and that makes him feel worse. 

But the letters are real, realer than the blue and white messages he has stored on his phone. So he picks himself up from the couch and walks to the wooden shelf near the tv, crouches down to the floor until he grabs a small wooden locked box and opens it, removing the letters he had put there an eternity ago.

He rereads them, one by one. He feels like crying, again, but can’t make himself do it. 

__“Our house. Our house. Our home.”_ _

He reads that one over and over. It’s his favorite. It breaks his heart with its softness.

When he’s done, he wraps himself in the blanket, and goes to bed. He keeps the tv on, for some sound so he doesn’t fall asleep to silence again, and the letters on the coffee table. That’s a problem for him tomorrow. 

—

On his off days, Taeyong misses his record collection the most, but he makes do with a bluetooth speaker and spotify. It’s not the same as back home, but nothing is and that’s the main goal of it all.

The song that plays is slow and old, too old. Taeyong drops the plate he’s washing in the sink immediately and it breaks. 

It’s his and Johnny’s song. 

It has no lyrics, it’s just a slow melody. Through their years in college it seemed to follow them like a joke— Taeyong was too much of a selfish asshole to truly appreciate it, Johnny was busy with his degree actually doing something with his life to stop and listen to it. But then, they got older. 

In the years that followed, Taeyong grew. It was bitter, he felt like stumbling in the dark and learning how to walk at the same time. Johnny grew too, having dreams bigger than Taeyong. Somehow, in the middle, they met. Johnny was safe, a remnant of a past that he didn’t enjoy having exactly, but it was before he felt like all his bones were being broken and set back together again in the “adult world” that was promised. If outside their house there was nothing but harsh lessons in short, demanding schedules and constant readjustment, Johnny was a break from all that. 

Somewhere along the lines, Taeyong realised he clung to Johnny for a person he wasn’t anymore. He realised it when Johnny first rented the place where he has his coffee shop now. It wasn’t that he knew he couldn’t do it— god, Taeyong set Johnny on a pedestal so high that he could do anything, just like a god can; it was that he __managed__ to do it. 

He grew up. Taeyong realized that he didn’t. 

So, Taeyong started panicking. In the spiral that followed, he retreated so far back into himself that he shut his boyfriend out and they broke up. And while work calmed down, he never felt fulfilled, accomplished, __worthy__ of anything. He’d been going forward not because he __wanted__ but because he felt like he had to. He still didn’t envision a future for himself, after all these years. 

Taeyong was no different now than the Taeyong Johnny saw coming home every night, drunk, faded out, clothes half bloodied and half teared, blood more coffee and vodka than red, a stomach full of fast food because he couldn’t feed himself properly, hair fried because he dyed it so often, spitting angry, slurred words to Johnny if he dared talking back, waking up angry with him the day after if he didn’t say anything, with no direction so he fell to the floor and stayed there. There were some fights and busted lips. Their first kiss had been out of rage, their first night together, too. 

And somewhere along the lines, Taeyong wanted only Johnny’s eyes on him. So he changed. Because he wanted Johnny— the man that covered him when he came back to their dorms trashed and crashed on the bed without even taking off his shoes. He wanted Johnny because he was a good man, he loved him, and his eyes stayed on him longer when he was also being good. 

But Taeyong was this stitching of the person he was, angry and reactive, with the person he wasn’t, composed and calm still. And one day the seams burst and he had to go. Because Johnny was not his rehab center, and he had brought him enough pain already. Because Johnny was worthy of better. 

He cries at the sink, realising how he’s still selfish after all these years, keeping his feelings leashed instead of letting go. Johnny's gentle smiles towards him made him convince himself that it would still be ok to keep these embers close. It brings him both pain and relief— to realise he’s still the person he was years ago, untouched by Johnny’s care. He keeps crying until his mother calls him, her voice resounding through the house, amplified by her on speaker. 

—

Johnny goes straight to bed when he arrives at his apartment. Takes off his shoes, uses mouthwash instead of brushing his teeth, puts on his pajamas and sleeps. 

It’s more of a memory than a true dream, however.

Taeyong and him are at one of those stores that are open twenty-four seven. The entire dream is washed out in this blue light that makes everything look dull, but he can still see Taeyong’s platinum hair peeking from under his hoodie. 

“What are we doing here?”

Taeyong turns to him, much younger, and says nothing. He’s wearing a mask and fingerless gloves, ripped jeans and combat boots, just like he used to do in his first years of college. He turns left on an aisle of chips and finds himself in home goods, somehow. 

“Taeyong.”

“Choose.”

He points to a crate filled with packages of blankets wrapped in plastic. Johnny looks at Taeyong like he’s mad. 

“Please.”

He sighs deeply but gives up. Taeyong is trying, which is a first. 

“How did you even find this place?”

“I was… coming back from a night out. Saw this. Thought… it would help. Maybe.”

“Yeah no, sorry, buying a new blanket won’t make up for the fact that you fucked up the one that my __dead__ grandmother gave me while __drunk__ and threw it away.”

He sees Taeyong slouch in defeat and balling up his hands in fists from the corner of his eyes while he’s hunched over the crate still. He pulls again and again until he pulls up one that caught his attention from the bottom of the pile, and when he manages to fish it out, he holds it up along with another one. The strain in his muscles from the effort mirror the strain in Taeyong’s face to not cry.

“But it’s a start, I guess. The blue tartan one or the fluffy white one?”

Taeyong’s breath halts, and his eyes scan the store, looking everywhere but him. But Johnny is patient, he __has__ a little brother after all, and waits. 

“White one. It’s fluffy.”

“White one it is then.”

Taeyong pays, and when they step into the night to go back home, Johnny lets himself stare at Taeyong, the way his breath comes out in a cloud due to the winter, his face being framed by city lights. It’s a long walk until home, silent as none of them talk, the crinkling of the plastic being the only sound between them. 

Taeyong speaks up when they’re two blocks away from home. He stops and Johnny only notices when he’s a few steps ahead.

“Johnny. I’m sorry.”

After all these years, he’s still surprised at the steadiness behind his voice. It’s not off putting by any means, but it is different for this Taeyong. Every word that he had spoken to Johnny until now, even those in anger, were backed by a trembling and uneasiness that Johnny learned to recognize well. Even Taeyong’s posture looks different— it’s steady, even if his hands tremble while waiting for an answer, if he even gets one. 

Johnny remembers that this is the night he truly starts looking at Taeyong, looking at this man that doesn’t run away from his mistakes. Now, many years later, he envies that. 

This Taeyong with ripped jeans and fingerless gloves, half hidden in hoodies will disappear eventually. In his place, there’s a Taeyong that learned to deal with himself and others, that bears the bitter pain of learning and growing gracefully. A Taeyong that will giggle when they paint the ceiling to their house, their house, their __home__ , together, that finds happiness in weird forms and colorful squiggles. 

A Taeyong that, eventually, leaves, because there’s better things out there and he wants them even with the fear of being alone. 

That Taeyong leaves a Johnny behind— one that took their relationship as complacency, dependent on him to find peace among the chaos of setting his (their) future up, as if Taeyong owed him an oasis from the rest of the world. As if he hadn’t navigated their relationship with assumptions, guesses of his instead of answers found by both of them. Once his eyes found Taeyong, they never seemed to quite look anywhere else. 

Taeyong has managed to move on with Doyoung. Johnny had not. He lived with ghosts of the one day Taeyong visited his house years ago, a house he only has because he was running the opposite of Taeyong once they broke up, because that’s what Taeyong __seemed__ to want. But he, selfishly, never removed himself from his life completely, and in sunday dinners and friend gatherings, his eyes rested on Taeyong still, with years of finding peace in him in this simple gesture.

“I know,” he answers back to this dreamy Taeyong that hasn’t left him yet. For good measure, and early apology for his sins, he adds, “I am too.”

He wakes up restless. 

When he makes coffee in the morning and finds the letters opened and on display on the coffee table. Looking around, he sees how even unconsciously, Taeyong creeped into his home: the letters, the plushies, the old clothes, a desk, two electric blue drawers that do not fit in with the rest of his apartment, a vinyl collection with songs that followed them from the beginning ‘till the end. He decides to mindlessly reread his words, caressing the paper to ground himself, keeping the Taeyong he found in his dreams closer to him for just a second longer. 

He reads his favorite one, and shatters. 

— 

__I came back home for a few days. Mother is cleaning the house of the old stuff, and it feels nice— helping her, the new spaces, her joy when something is cleaned and ready to be used mindfully. Dad is in his little world as always, but I think he appreciates it as well._ _

__And I love them, I really do. And I’m proud of them for taking this step._ _

__Still._ _

__Still, there’s a certain part of me that hates it here. My room is not mine anymore— mother has put her stuff in it, the closets are filled to the brim with just.... stuff. Useless junk, trinkets that they never use, old stuff that no one wears, or wants, but is kept anyway because that’s the right thing to do I guess._ _

__Seeing the old spaces I lived in filled… is odd. Odder even is seeing my old stuff being put in a pile for me to sort, and having no attachment to any of it. Oddest of all, in all the nooks and crankies of this town, this house, this room, is being confronted with a person I no longer am, a person I never even imagined being. When my parents look at me, I am not the person I am. I am a person they used to know, with patches here and there of the son they fabricated from the stories I told them over the phone while I was away. And I love them. But…_ _

__In many ways, it’s like the clothing I wear around here. Given by my parents, the cuffs of the shirts are too high. The pants are too short. The pajamas too ratted. The robes too small. I can’t close the jackets and it’s cold. Mom is slowly going deaf._ _

__I miss the colors and shapes in the ceiling of my bedroom. Plain white just makes me overthink when I look at it at night. I think I miss you too, but I don’t know if it’s because I truly do, or because it’s around you I feel the most comfortable and safest._ _

__You have, after all, seen all of me. Even the worst parts._ _

__When I come back, I’ll ask you why you stay._ _

—

It’s cold and it’s night time when he makes it to Korea and even colder and deeper into the night when he stands in front of Taeyong’s house. He’s living in his uncle’s old house, the one where he told Johnny he would spend his days as a teen before moving countries when his parents were a bit too much. 

He rings the bell once and waits outside the gates. The pitch of the doorbell is heard one, two, three times, and echoes in his head, empty just like the street he’s in. 

He didn’t bring much with him, just a box, and one suitcase. He didn’t bring more to prevent himself from crossing the boundaries he set from himself. 

Yet, when he sees Taeyong open the door, and snuggle himself in his cardigan, he really, really has to try to retrain himself. Taeyong lets the keys on the door, their metal clinking reminding Johnny of the cold that settles on him and freezes him to the ground, and walks till the gate. He doesn’t open it. 

“You’re here.”

“I am.”

“You should’ve called. I would have picked you up from the airport.”

“It’s too late in the night. I didn’t want you making unnecessary trips. I took a cab.”

Taeyong crosses his arms, closes the cardigan a little bit more and nods. He looks at the things Johnny brought, raises an eyebrow at the box but doesn’t question it. His eyes lock on the one suitcase Johnny brought for his week abroad. He probably thinks it isn’t enough, and he’s probably right, but Johnny can’t bring himself to care much as he looks at Taeyong for the first time in a year since he left him at the airport. 

His hair is shorter, and brown. His cheeks seem rounder, and all of him looks softer under the yellow street lights and the faint while lights that come from the entrance of the house. Korea looked well on Taeyong, and Johnny was sure he had to thank Taeyong’s mom for making sure he ate well since he was here. 

He looks surreal. Too close to him, breathing and living and eyeing him up and down waiting for him to speak, glancing at the box waiting for an explanation. Johnny had left America in the middle of the year on vacation, with no real plan except being next to Taeyong, called him with a month of advance to organize everything with him, so he couldn’t run from it. 

Taeyong had been ecstatic. They called more frequently to organize everything, finding middle grounds on both their schedules to meet one another half way. 

Then the conversations mellowed from friendly happiness to… something else. Something fonder. And one day, while he heard Taeyong’s sleepy voice through the phone, struggling to keep awake, Johnny let it slip. 

__“I’m bringing something for you.”_ _

__“Okay.”_ _

Taeyong had said that word with a sleepy sigh, fully trusting and warm. The letters weighed heavily on his arms. Taking one breath to gather courage, he let the suitcase he had brought stand, and took a step forward to the gate. Taeyong looked even more of a vision up close.

“This is yours. You… left them.”

Taeyong doesn’t get the opportunity to ask what it is before Johnny opens the box and he __pales__. His hands tremble when he takes the letters from Johnny, and tears swell in his eyes when he looks at Johnny for an explanation, to explain himself, to ask why, to find the best way to run, all at once. 

“Did you— Please, you didn’t— Did you—”

“I read them.” Johnny says, saving them both. Taeyong trembles even more, looks away from Johnny to cradle the box in his arms, closed and out of sight. 

“I shouldn’t have, I know. I messed the boxes I wanted to bring home, the one with the plushies, and brought that one instead. I thought it was bills or something of that kind but…”

“Why are you here if you read them?” Taeyong spits back, tears running down his mortified face. Johnny wants to reach forward to dry them, to let Taeyong hide in the place his neck meets his shoulder and caress his hair to console him, but there's steel that separates them, and Taeyong hasn’t given him permission to enter again. 

“God fucking dammit John, why did you have to do this— It’s cold, it’s probably going to snow or rain or something and you __just__ arrived and I __just__ started to feel like, to feel like—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you, fuck you and your sorrys.”

Johnny gets it, he really does. He balls his hands in a fist and realises this is probably how Taeyong felt to desecrate something so __sacred__ of his back in college. 

“I really am, Taeyong. For many things, not just this.”

Taeyong wipes his runny nose on the sleeve of his cardigan and hides his pitiful sobs there. Johnny watches for a second, feeling like his ribcage is giving in and his bones are stabbing at his heart, before he speaks again. Taeyong is asking again and again why he is here in a low, pitchy voice between his tears and he’ll answer. 

“To give you an answer.”

Taeyong looks at him and his sobs go down until he only has his breath to catch, and streaks on his face. He brings the box closer to himself when Johnny gives yet another step and he grips the beams of the gate, close as Taeyong will allow him. 

“I stayed because I loved you, Taeyong.”

“I’m sorry I never said it properly. But I stayed because I loved you, still do. I kept staying no matter your bad or good days because I wanted them all, Taeyong, wanted __you__. God, I never wanted anyone else— and I was stupid enough to let go without a fight because I, I, I kept assuming and assuming until you were more an idea in my mind than a person, something safe, I guess, and you deserve __better__ , Taeyong. And I kept assuming you didn’t want anything too. And I was wrong. For that and much more. For staying like that, and leaving, and not talking. For never moving on too.”

“But even with all that, no matter what. I never stopped looking at you. Never.”

Taeyong doesn’t respond, just looks at him, mouth slightly open, frozen, as if the night’s cold had caught up to him. Johnny rests his head on the gates’ bars, closes his eyes, not daring to speak. His stomach twists and knots, as if he was on a boat in the open sea during a storm, but he’s still, so incredibly still. 

After minutes, Taeyong shuffles closer, and closes one of his hands atop Johnny’s. 

“What now, Johnny?” He whispers. Johnny can’t figure him out anymore, this tone of voice he uses just for him, a foreign tongue in his homeland. 

“You decide.”

He’ll put himself at Taeyong’s mercy, sacrificing everything. His memories from a friday afternoon, sunny and filled with splatters of paint, countless college study sessions in the library, infinite mornings waking up next to him, with sun, rain, clouds, snow, both past and future, if need be. He dies a little when he thinks of sacrificing his vinyl collection, the white blanket he brought on his backpack because it seemed wrong not to. He puts the letters on the line too, every word and interpretation he took from them, and every tear along with it. He puts on the scale his hours of work at the shop too, from morning until night, the ones where he kept himself occupied to run from all _ _this__ , himself, and then the ones he worked to make time just to see Taeyong one more time. And it’s still not enough for one word of Taeyong’s answer back to him, if he even wants to answer. He thinks back to a young Taeyong with steel on his voice and a tremble in his legs asking for forgiveness, and throws a quick prayer to his grandmother in apology as he throws the blanket that started this all on that scale too, hoping it tips in his favor. 

Taeyong answers. 

“Johnny.”

When he raises his head, Taeyong has his against the steel bars too. Too close. Too real. 

“I can’t think what will happen if I see you go again.”

Johnny's heart stops before it restarts back up again. Taeyong had an empty notebook and two empty photo albums next to the letters and he finally realises why they were there. Johnny brought them too. 

“Then I’ll stay.”

Taeyong opens the gate.


End file.
